


Catch a Whiff of Something There

by orange_8_hands



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Investigation, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:49:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They lie. Time doesn't heal anything.  (Pre-canon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch a Whiff of Something There

**Author's Note:**

> It took awhile, but I finally wrote a Teen Wolf fic yesterday. (This fandom is incredibly intimidating to write for, considering how few bad fics there are in it.)

  
When you were seventeen you dropped your pen, dropped your notebook and walked out of English class and into the hallway. You ignored the rolled eyes exchanged behind your back and your teacher's cut off mutter and you walked, tugging on one of two threads still left, until you found your brother bowed in front of his locker, a note clenched in his hand and the stench of shame and guilt mixing with both of your grief. You grabbed his shoulder and didn't ask questions and let yourself be found by the Deputy and the Principal, and because the news was so horrific, because you were always the weird Hale children, they didn't ask how you knew when they took you to the hospital to see if your uncle would be the only survivor.  
  
You don't tell them, you don't tell any outsiders, that you felt the threads pull taunt until they snapped, that they burnt ash into the back of your mouth and choked you with strangled flames across your lungs, and there's no need to tell the only one still standing because sorrow crumbles his knees until you're both panting under the weight of unreleased howls. There's nothing to say about the thick control of alpha now entwined in your bones, that Aunt Jenny died third while all around her the pack burned. There's nothing to say and there's no way to explain why you plant wolfs bane in the bones of your dead family before you leave, before you take your brother as he curls inside himself and escape the pity these townspeople, these people who spread rumors about that old Hale house in the before, now emote until your wolf sneezes, until your human body shakes with repressed rage. It's not pity you need when most of your family disappears in an instant, and so even though this is home, you take your brother and leave, because five generations may have lived in the Hale house on the edge of the woods but they were wiped away with one spark.  
  
You were raised to lead but you were never supposed to do this alone, not so your family becomes an unmoving shape in a hospital bed and a boy locked into himself. You run in the woods and store the scents inside your heart because you won't make it back until you can figure out why the word _accident_ sounds like a lie, why your brother can't meet your eyes and what exactly you're supposed to do now. You're seventeen and you promise yourself _one day_ , you give yourself a break and say not now.  
  
                                                                                        ----------------------  
  
New York is too silent. You live with your brother in an apartment at the edge of a town, a town outside of the city and on the cusp of a woods so long it would take you decades to travel every mile. Your apartment is old, creeks and groans as pipes resettle themselves, mice scurrying in and out as if begging you to give chase. You leave an old radio on during the day and the windows open at night, but there's nothing you can do to cover the silence of missing voices. Your brother's locked down and keeps trying to shut you out, but you've been his sister for fifteen years, you've been his future alpha for just as long, and when you never ask the questions he's waiting for you to ask he finally relaxes, cracks open just enough for you to burrow in tight. He can't tell you why his tears are more than sorrow, doesn't have the words to say the things you can't handle hearing, and you both find it easier and easier to ignore the heavy stones of blame that will sink you both. He smiles, a quick burst across his face, white teeth flashing and eyes catching yours, and you'll take this over the truth until you both stop smelling like mourning.   
  
But see, they lie. Neither of you have to say a word when grief radiates out your pores. There's no end to this kind of sorrow, and you cling to your brother because he's all you have left. You cling to your brother because he closes his eyes like he can disappear if he wishes it enough. He closes his eyes like he can lose himself, as if you'd ever let him stay lost.  
  
                                                                                        ----------------------  
  
Neither of you are children and you don't understand why he loses it, eyes flashing blue until you dig your claws into his shoulder to calm him down. He twitches but sinks into the pain gratefully, and you shower after now, hands almost raw, until you lose the smell of sex and unknown boy from your skin. You don't ask, three years later and still so sad you feel you can blow away at the smallest memory trigger, why he smelled like sex and secrets the weeks before the fire, you don't ask why he still stinks of shame and guilt when he forgets how closely you watch him. You don't ask but you store it away in the back of your mind and you know it's coming, you won't be able to stop yourself from finding out before you return home.  
  
Before you _can_ return home.  
  
                                                                                        ----------------------  
  
You learn the rhythms of this new world you've had to build for the both of you. You have thousands of miles of woods and only two bodies, and you're so lonely you can drown in it. You decide on cars and he decides on plants and you both spend your days fixing other people's mistakes, wrecked vehicles and broken lawns, scratched paint and tilted flowers. You smell like oil and he smells like dirt, and maybe, slowly, you both start to smell like hope. He's quicker to smile, quicker to play and you soak in his joy, the wolf stretching and stretching inside of you, waiting to reach out and hook others under its jaw. You are a pack of two and the alpha rumbles, stalks to the surface and demands more.     
  
You don't explain it to him. Despite the weekly lessons, you barely understand the power of this draw, this growing need to have more strings to tug, to nuzzle into new skin and _claim_. You listen to your wolf because you are your wolf, but you don't know how to tell your brother you want to build a new family when he's still wrecked from the one you lost. He doesn't cry and he doesn't talk about them, and while you will forever be in the after of the fire, you think of bitterness until sorrow drags you into madness and you know, _you know_ you can't stand still like he seems to.  
  
                                                                                        ----------------------  
  
They lie, you see. Time doesn't do a fucking thing to fix the broken mess of your brother.  
  
It's not hard, to put the pieces together, even years later and a whole country away. Not hard to figure out it was hunters, not hard to figure out which hunter, not even necessarily hard to figure out how, not when shame still follows your brother like a shadow, not when guilt still dodges his steps like a boxer. You call flight plans and you arrange for a friend of a friend to sell you his car at the airport and you tell him you're going to check on Uncle Peter in person, _its okay, stay here_. You tell him _I'll be back soon_ and you tell him not to worry, and as a plane takes you home you write a list of names to start with. He's not ready to tell you the truth but you finally think you're ready to hear it, and you're ready to forgive him when you step off the plane and feel like you can breath, finally, as the alpha in you licks its lips in anticipation.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: I finally found [the post](http://orangemeta.tumblr.com/post/144744960135/jebiwonkenobi-look-i-know-that-im-an-asshole) on why I think Derek is a landscaper - he has a little potted plant. Also, the camaro being Laura's car has always been my headcanon.


End file.
